Indiana Adventure

This last weekend me and two band-mates made a trip to Indiana to lead worship for a youth retreat. It was the most eventful trip I've ever taken. So I decided to try and capture the excitement in a blog. I'll attempt to include all of the details. There will be no exaggeration. Brace yourselves.

Day 1:
We leave around 5 o'clock. Matt decides to run through a "quick" carwash to get the van ready for the long drive. "Clean the windshield", he says. "It'll only take a minute", he says. He decides to go ahead and swipe his credit card while the person in front of us is still in the wash. The machine dries the guy in front of us...then he just sits there. The wash starts over. He doesn't move. The idiot TOOK OUR CAR WASH. 8 DOLLARS! It has now been 25 minutes. We ask the guy if he let it wash his truck twice on purpose. He says...Yeah I think so. I've never used this before. We decide to go ahead and get on the interstate.

We make it to Nashville. So far the trip has been lots of fun. We've been listening to some funny CDs and laughing a lot. We get to the hotel/suite that was booked for us only to find that the office is closed. Not a good sign. The security guard opens the door and gets us a key. The place feels kinda creepy. Sorta like a trailer park. We go to our room and find it has only one bed. So I call the security guard and he lets us in a different room with two beds. And then he says, "You make sure to close your door". I say, "Of course we're going to close our door." He says, "No, I'm serious. Make sure and lock your door. I mean it. For your own safety. This isn't a good place for you to be." ??!!??!!!
So now we're just a little freaked out. Now the picture is becoming clear. the liquor store and the adult video store across the street should have clued us in. This is a BAD NEIGHBORHOOD. And we've got thousands of dollars worth of gear in the car. And Marshall is too scared to sleep on the couch near the door. So around midnight. I finally say, "If you guys want to just keep driving we can." Without hesitation, both guys jump up and start getting their shoes on. LOL.

Day 1.5
So we load back up in the car and head for Indiana. It should only be about 2.5 hours. We get some coffee and stuff and are doing great. Then we hit Louisville. Rain like you've never seen is dumping on us. It was so heavy that we had to drive 20 mph. Then it starts going sideways from left to right. The rain that is. It's completely at a 90 degree angle. Then all of a sudden, the rain starts going sideways from right to left. A TORNADO??? There are cars spun out all over the place. Needless to say, we were no longer fighting sleep. We were, could you say, just a little puckered? After we made it through what seemed like a never ending storm, we were even more exhausted from being to tense. Props to Matt for driving through that mess.

Day 2:
4 a.m. We arrive at the campground. Their office is closed as we expected. We decide to sleep in the car. Matt has some sort of sleep apnoea grizzly bear snoring type thing he does when he "sleeps". Marshall and I are so buzzed from no sleep that all we can do is giggle. By this time we were so miserable that it actually was laughable.
5:50 a.m. Matt wakes up and says he's cold. I say, let's check the office. There's a very nice girl there who let's us follow her to our dorm and opens it for us. We go inside and lay down on the beds and sleep for a couple hours.
8:00 a.m. I wake up with what most assuredly looks like strep throat. And I have to sing all weekend. So I call my Dr. and he calls in some antibiotics for me to the local Walmart (which by the way was even more like a trailer park). So Marshall and I drive to Walmart. We get out of the car and it smells like cow poop. No lie. It took an hour for the pharmacy to get my stuff ready. We head back to get Matt and then meet my Aunt and Uncle for lunch. That was a highlight of our trip. They bought it for us and my Aunt brought me some snowcream in a cooler.
9:30 p.m. The youth group arrives. We set up our gear and have a great worship service with them. Tom Agnew speaks and does a great job. It's good to be with Ben Taylor again.

Day 2.5
2:30 a.m. After much laughter and funny stories, I finally go to bed.

Day 3
Saturday morning and all day Saturday is good. The services were good, the free time was good. The meals were good. Matt purchased a guitar. Saturday night we had what was supposed to be a bonfire. It was more like a small campfire for 30 people. It kept going out. It was cold out. Once all but 7 or 8 of us left...the fire started roaring so the remnant enjoyed a great fire and some s'mores.

Day 4
Sunday morning at 5 a.m. I wake up and cannot breathe. I don't just mean that my nose was stopped up. My throat was closing up. My gagger was as big as my thumb and was getting stuck in my throat. I wake Marshall up and type out a text on my phone for him to read cuz I can't talk. He gets the nurse. She says, "go to the hospital". We get Matt and head out the door. The campgrounds decided to lock the gate to the outside world; something about "keeping people safe". So we call for them to come open it. It takes them 15 minutes. My adrenaline is pumping and I'm getting nauseous. After the lady finally opens the gate, Matt takes off while following his GPS on his phone. It's leading us turn by turn to the "nearest hospital". Finally the GPS tells us we're at our destination. But guess what. We're in the middle of a field. There's no hospital around us. Now I have to barf. And I can't breathe already. I literally thought at that moment that I was about to die. How do you barf when you can't breathe?

Matt calls 911. The lady offers to send an ambulance. I muster out of my swollen throat to Matt, "That'll take too long..have her give you directions". So she does. And we make it to the hospital. Not after me barfing though. I threw up so hard that my whole face swelled up where I couldn't open my eyes. And I didn't die.

The emergency room people were great. They were timely and kind. They gave me a steroid injection and some stuff for nausea. They took an Xray to make sure there was anything else going on. They took a throat culture to check for strep. That was fun. The guy said, "open your mouth". I couldn't even begin to open my mouth without gagging 'cause my gagger was still so swollen it was resting on my tongue. Yuck. We got it done though.

8 a.m. or so: We left the hospital and went back to pack our bags. Then Matt drove us all the way home through the snow.

Today:
I still feel like crud. I'm taking meds and resting. Matt got in trouble for purchasing the guitar. Marshall is just glad it's over. I think he may have cried a little from the overload of emotions and adrenaline. That's why we love him though. He's real.

OVERALL: The retreat was awesome. The ministry and worship and fellowship was great. The TRIP however was the most horrific experience.

There ya have it. Sorry for the long read. A lot happened.
johnny